Cold Case Christianity

[Adam]

I was about to start a thread on the new movie, "God's not Dead 2" that I enjoyed today. However, I realized that what I really wanted to dwell on was the staged courtroom testimony claiming to establish that the gospels contain eyewitness testimony. I researched and found that the actor playing the role was (like Lee Strobel just before) just being himself. He is Jim (J. Warner) Wallace, in real life the cold-case forensics expert he plays in the movie. After 35 years as an atheist, he applied his cold-case method to the (four?) gospels and found them to contain authentic eyewitness reports about Jesus. That is, the same thing I have been saying.
Or is it? Like me, he's no Fundamentaiist, he acknowledges that the gospels conflict with one another. But that's the virtue, he says, because the differences are just the kind that would arise from the independent accounts of eyewitnesses.
But I don't say there are independent eyewitness accounts that generally overlap one another. I see an earlier account often overwritten or blended into another maybe later (not always eyewitness) account. Rarely do I see the same set of verses coming from more than one of my seven eyewitness sources (nor the editing and redacting). So does his method agree with mine or conflict? Do my finding undermine his methods? I have to get his book and investigate how much we agree and disagree. His book is Cold Case Christianity.

[outhouse]

J. Warner Wallace is a blithering idiot with no real historical education.


His work is apologetically based on faith and fantasy for the sole purpose of book sales.




It carries no credibility as he is off the chart for letting his bias guide his poor poor work.

[outhouse]

"God's not Dead 2" what a pile of crap that is.

Critics Consensus: Every bit the proselytizing lecture promised by its title, God's Not Dead 2 preaches ham-fistedly to its paranoid conservative choir.

[Adam]

Reviewers have always been very liberal, like the Hollywood Establishment itself, and usually homosexual. Their bias shows above all against Christian movies. I saw the movie today and was surprised how far it was above usual standards for Christian movies.
Did you see it? I doubt it's out yet in an outlying city like Auburn.
There nevertheless are good reviewers. I liked Gene Siskel for one.
There have been lots of good Christian movies lately. First there was Arisen (a little slow in the second half, paradoxically since it featured the Resurrection), then The Young Messiah, and then Miracles from Heaven. All were good, though poorly attended because of this very media bias. They never give Christian movies an even break.
Then Ben-Hur comes in August.

[outhouse]

Apologetic rhetoric has no value outside the faithful, none at all.

[Adam]

I'm taking that back. I don't want this whole thread to get thrown Nowhere in Particular.

[winningedge101]

His book is actually a good one. It is indeed a solid defense of the credibility and authorship of the gospels. Try not to dump on someone's credibility as a historian or scholar before you actually read their book. I actually bought the book because I was intrigued on how a homicide detective would approach the gospels as they would approach any cold case. The only criticism I can make of the book off the top of my head is that J Warner Wallace seems to like to use Papias as evidence for the traditional authorship of the gospels but it seems he agrees with the consensus of scholars that Mark is the first gospel ignoring the fact that it seems like Papias says that Matthew was written first. Papias doesn't really specify on whether this logia of Matthew is an actual gospel or just a Q like document.

[Giuseppe]

@Adam

Or is it? Like me, he's no Fundamentaiist, he acknowledges that the gospels conflict with one another. But that's the virtue, he says, because the differences are just the kind that would arise from the independent accounts of eyewitnesses.

@outhouse

J. Warner Wallace is a blithering idiot with no real historical education.

Now I understand why you two are so different!

[Adam]

I have ordered the book, Cold Case Christianity.
Meanwhile I have been watching/listening to J. Warner Wallace's various you-tube videos on the topic. I haven't gotten yet to the part that shows how the gospel accounts have minor differences that show that each is independent of the other. Meanwhile I'm holding to my preference for each deriving from a common underlying source(s).

[outhouse]

Try not to dump on someone's credibility as a historian or scholar before you actually read their book. .

The dude is not a scholar or historian.

He is an apologist.